[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 72: Diabolos

Note: With the advent of the Collections series, I'll be dropping the chapter release tag from future posts as this officially marks the start of Book 2 of Voidknight. Not a big deal either way, just thought I'd give everybody a heads up!

Apostos was in stitches, which was a lot better off than Sumet was. Which, if you were to get technical, was nowhere.

Dissolution was a hell of a way to go, and it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fellow. He lifted a gloved finger and wiped away a tear from the mask he wore.

“Oh, that was rich,” he said to the surrounding darkness.

Volquist was still piecing together what happened. Without meaning to, he felt at the wound of frozen shadow that had pierced through his coat.

It was a close call. A few inches closer, and he might have been gravely wounded in his current state.

Sumet had been tricked. That much was obvious. Sumet originally schemed against Samuel and Volquist, openly attacking Samuel—technically one of two Champions—in order to diminish Volquist’s power.

It seemed Sumet ultimately sought to replace Volquist with his divine might. Whether that was the entirety of it, Volquist wasn’t sure. Sumet no longer existed to tell his tale.

When Sumet launched that magic at Samuel, it served as the perfect opportunity for Apostos to twist that into an assault against Volquist, the Hidden One, now returned.

Right into his own demesne, too.

All it presumably took was a twitch of Apostos’ finger to yank the War Incarnate boy aside at the last moment. Sumet’s godly attack beamed right into Volquist’s domain through a portal the jester had cleverly created.

To attack another god… well, that sort of unruly behavior was in violation of the Golden Accord. Whether it was trickery or not, Sumet attacked Volquist.

Gods were forbidden to fight one another directly. Else, you were swiftly open to reprisal from your own pantheon.

Because if one’s own house didn’t clean up the mess, then somebody else higher up would, and then their whole Pantheon would be wiped out.

Such were the bindings of the Golden Accord.

And so, Sumet was no more, all because Apostos moved the various pieces into just the right order on the board.

“You said you would return the fragment of my domain back to me,” Volquist reminded the creature.

“Ah-ah!” Apostos wagged a finger at him. “I never said when! Don’t you know the devil is in the details? And in this instance, the devil is—”

“You, yes. I rather get it.” The Hidden One sighed.

It was a minor setback. A nuisance, nothing more. Volquist had made sure that Apostos couldn’t use the Hidden One’s domain for his own nefarious purposes as soon as Sumet was destroyed.

I have a roommate, he thought sourly. What are the odds?

Apostos was positively tickled pink that he was now “off the grid” as he had put it.

Volquist couldn’t quite help but feel that he had done exactly as Apostos had wanted this entire time. Sure, it had been mutually beneficial, but there was this unsettling feeling that Apostos was pulling the strings.

Nobody enjoyed that feeling, and a God enjoyed it far less than most!

“They’re rather interesting people, don’t you agree?” Apostos said, conjuring some grapes and popping them one by one through the half crying, half laughing mouth hole in his mask.

“The Incarnates?”

“Who else? Billions of new souls, and now two Incarnates as well! The gods must be beside themselves.”

This wasn’t the first time that Apostos had tried to pry information out of him. And while he was correct, the Gods were in a tizzy, he wasn’t about to give the devil what he wanted.

“Why did you help them?” Volquist asked.

“I like a plucky underdog,” Apostos said.

He had a knack for answering without really answering, and so Volquist let it go at that.

They each had a dark mirror open to the First Layer where Samuel and Raiko were located.

My Greater Blessing should keep them safe from reprisal,he thought to himself. And yet… Apostos seemed far too keenly interested in what was going on.

Minor amnesia aside, Sam and Raiko had gone through hell and come out the other side. Any Gods looking to score an easy victory would think twice after hearing about Sumet’s fate.

Each Pantheon kept their own business to themselves, so few outside of Volquist’s Pantheon would know the truth. All any other God would know is that Sumet pitted himself against two Incarnates and lost.

That would send one hell of a message.

They would be fine, but it would take them time to rebuild what was destroyed.

Much of the Skyshard was severely damaged after the fight, and Raiko’s body drawing so much Chaos mana from her Sacred Tree had drained it of several levels.

The Sacred Tree had acted as a conduit, through a puzzling means Volquist could not unveil. The Tree strengthened its guardian well past her capabilities at the time and paid a steep price for it.

In the end, they both survived because of it. Which would have a far reaching cascading effect.

Even now, Volquist watched as the outer Tiles were dissolved and crumbled away into the cloudsea around them.

None of that was interesting, however. Not to a creature like Apostos. So what the hell was he waiting for?

The devil got bored with genocide and Layer-wide wars; he had seen him flicking the vision of his dark mirror through several of the upper Layers without bothering to watch for more than a second.

Even the High House’s R-Initiations—prized among the Upper Layers for their brutality, subterfuge, and high entertainment value—were of little interest to Apostos.

So what was he waiting for? A reprisal from Sumet’s followers would make the most sense, but Volquist’s blessing should keep Raiko and Samuel safe.

Shouldn’t it?

If the Incarnates had managed to siphon a portion of Sumet’s power, maybe his followers would be able to track them. But how would they go about doing that?

The Hidden Pantheon had elected for dissolution! No, there had to be something else.

And yet, Volquist had the sneaking suspicion that Apostos was watching him from the corner of his eye slits, daring him to find out what it was he was up to.

Asking outright was out of the question, if only because he had already tried it. Not very becoming of the Hidden God, sure, but he was rusty after millennia shut in that damned prison.

It was a wonder the other Gods hadn’t come looking for him to put him back. He still knew their secrets, but now he was untethered from them. They would know of his return sooner than he would have liked.

With Sumet gone, that propelled Volquist into the third position within the Hidden Pantheon, which meant he would go on delegation visits to the other Pantheons as necessary. A chance to learn where the other Pantheons were ranked.

Volquist decided to switch up tactics.

He followed the celestial tethers of both Samuel and Raiko, looking for any reason that Apostos would have to remain interested.

Choosing Sam first, he found—due to proximity—his small talking cat. Now that he was able to look at her soul properly, he wondered how he had never realized she was a soul aeder when she had been right in front of him.

Still, not exactly odd. Incarnates often had soul companions. It was part of what made them special, soul aeder were naturally attracted to their sense of purpose and power.

Few others could keep a soul aeder safe, after all.

No, it wasn’t Komachi that interested Apostos, for all that they were exactly alike in many ways.

Searching farther afield, Volquist spied another Skyshard. A Settlement-Class Skyshard by the looks of it, one of the beginner ones a few lucky survivors would get from each of the starting islands.

They had a balanced mix of Tiles, enough fresh water, food, and resources for any burgeoning civilization worth its salt to start up again.

Volquist couldn’t help but frown. Why were there so few people there? Those Skyshards were meant to support hundreds of people and to rapidly grow from there!

Not my place to get involved. Let the mortals sort it out.

He had witnessed a few Initiations in his—relatively short—time as a Divine. But none so… hectic and chaotic as humans.

And what about the horrific creatures that came with them? What sick person created “spiders” or “centipedes”? The Shardrune had been blessedly free of such eldritch monstrosities.

Until now.

Even now, people connected to Sam were arguing and working at cross purposes. One person was designating a Tile as a Desert Tile at the same time as somebody right next to it was trying to build a Farming Tile.

They didn’t communicate, which naturally, upon finding out, caused an argument. But it was petty stuff that Volquist didn’t care about, so Apostos likely wouldn’t either.

None of them seemed to be a threat to the Incarnates or anybody but themselves. There was one person who watched rather than joined in on the bickering, but aside from being stronger than the others, there was nothing that Volquist could sense about him.

He cast his gaze over to Raiko and her soul tether instead. The binding cord that connected to another creature was far thicker than Sam’s and extended out beyond the Maelstrom of the First Layer.

Volquist would have considered them lucky, being so near to the Tower, if not for the fact that they were slowly but inexorably being pulled into the Maelstrom.

Maybe Raiko would be able to save them. They were both heading toward one another.

Good luck there, he thought with uncharacteristic sympathy.

Finally, his gaze settled upon the object of so much love and affection. A small Skyshard, little bigger than Sam’s Sil’mara, floated amid the cloudsea.

A drow with coal-black skin in opulent robes was sitting with a katana across his knees. He gently glided a whetstone across the blade’s edge as he watched the only other occupant of the Skyshard.

The source of Raiko’s obsession, it would seem. Not the drow, but a tiny soul aeder.

Is that a… pobul? Still, two soul aeders… and I blessed one. Well, the Kindred can’t be too mad about my past indiscretions now, can they?

The young Samurai watched the pobul, who was wearing a roughly woven wide-brimmed conical hat and using a tiny hoe to prepare the ground for planting.

There were only a couple of Tiles, but the pair seemed to know how to make the most out of what little they had.

Unlike those connected to Sam who put conflicting Tiles right next to each other, the Samurai and the pobul used the three Tiles they had to provide utility to one another.

The pobul hoed the partially tilled Farming Tile, which was touching one side to a Lake Tile, providing fresh water and fertile silt. On the other side of the Lake Tile was another Farming Tile, positioned in such a way that the water from the Lake Tile could flow into it and flood the fields.

Volquist had faint memories of a time when he had farmed [Bomb Rice] and [Amora], both of which needed to be flooded to properly germinate.

In the case of the [Bomb Rice], exposing it to the scorching summer heat of the Rital Plains back home on a Shardrune Realm that no longer existed would have had the planting fields cratered in under a day.

Only the water kept the [Bomb Rice] cool enough to prevent it from going critical and exploding before it could stabilize as it matured.

It was surprising how fondly he remembered those times. And how much he missed them.

Despite the trip down memory lane, he still saw no reason why Apostos would be watching the Incarnates. Their soul tethers revealed nothing but potential allies that were either too incompetent or too far away to be of immediate assistance (or detriment) to the Incarnates.

Just as the Hidden God was about to dissolve his dark mirror and go about the arduous task of rebuilding his sect and followers, he saw Apostos sit up and pay attention.

Scanning the horizon of the cloudsea, Volquist strained to find what had made the devil so damn interested.

And then, far in the distance, emerging from some distant plane beyond the Shardrune Realm, he saw it and cursed aloud.

That should be impossible.

“Wondered when you’d finally catch on,” Apostos said, summoning a bowl of popcorn and eating it giddily. “This is going to be good.”

Volquist swept his vision away from Sam and Raiko’s Skyshard to the floating city that had just appeared in the distance.

There was no mistaking that curving, twitching, malicious architecture. He recognized Sumet’s power within it, but it was so much worse than that. It had been touched by an Outsider.

He wondered how it was possible that his corrupted priests had found Sam and Raiko.

There was no way it was a simple coincidence. Apostos wouldn’t have been interested in something as mundane as that.

He planned this somehow.

The sweeping inky spires of the Black City glittered with hatred as they swam into view. It was an impressively large Skyshard, but thankfully not so large as to contain an entire civilization.

It was a lesser Skyshard, one that had once housed the mortal seat of Sumet’s power on the First Layer. Now it was something far more dangerous.

It was more than enough to destroy just about anything on the First Layer with the ease of swatting a fly. And they were headed straight for Sam and Raiko.

If he warned them, it would only draw further attention to their Skyshard. But if he did nothing, would they even know the terrible danger they were in?

By the time they saw it on the horizon, it would already be too late.

Sumet’s death cult, corrupted and tainted by eldritch magic, was coming for them.